In the Sanctuary of Outcasts (3 page)

My building was called Dutchtown, named for a neighboring community on the Mississippi River. Inside, Dutchtown looked and smelled like my freshman dormitory at Ole Miss. The hallway floors were shiny and polished and eight doorways lined each side. The prison cells were really just rooms with linoleum floors and stucco walls, but all the doors had been removed. The frames still had screw holes from the hinges. As I walked to my room, I saw a man in a bathrobe and flip-flops walk across the hall and into another inmate’s room. Obviously, I wasn’t going to have much privacy.

Upstairs, I found number 204, my assigned room, and peered through the entrance. There were three small cots, a desk, a chair, metal lockers, a small closet, and a sink with a mirror over it. I didn’t expect to have a mirror, but I was glad to see it. If I had to wear wrinkled clothing, at least I could keep well groomed and take some pride in my appearance.

In one of the beds, a man lay on his back reading. An open magazine entitled
Cutis
, a medical journal of some sort, was propped upright on his chest, hiding his face. I stepped into the room, and the man let the magazine fall. He took off his reading glasses and squinted to get a good look at me. He looked distinguished, even in prison attire. He was in his midfifties, with a slightly receding hairline and a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. He stood up, held out his arms, and said, “Thank God, you’re white.” He introduced himself as Victor Dombrowsky. “But everybody calls me Doc,” he added. “Welcome to Carville,” he said, “where they quarantine lep
ers, where the petrochemical companies discharge their waste, and where they send the likes of us. You’re now officially part of a human garbage dump.”

Doc picked up an armload of magazines from the cot next to the window, explaining that he’d been using my bed as a desk.

I placed my shirts, shorts, books, and quarters in an empty locker, and Doc went back to reading his medical journal. As he read, he asked about my family, my hometown, the length of my sentence, and my crime. I could see Doc’s profile as he read, but he never looked away from his magazine.

“Did you testify against anybody?” he asked.

“No,” I said, moving to make up my bed.

“Good,” he said after a beat, “’cause I hate fuckin’ rats.”

I put the coarse, government-issued sheets and gray wool blanket on my bed. I would miss the Egyptian cotton sheets that felt so good at home.

As I struggled to put my pillow into its case, Doc said, “Tell them you’ve got neck trouble. They’ll give you an extra pillow.”

I mentioned to Doc that I had been in the magazine business. He put his journal down, sat up, and showed a touch of enthusiasm. “Maybe you can help me,” he said. “I’ve invented a device, and I need a good marketing man.”

I asked him about the invention. Doc hesitated. “Well…it’s an injection device. When it’s loaded with a certain drug combination, it cures…impotence.”

“Where do you inject?” I asked.

“That’s my major hurdle,” Doc said, like he’d been over all this a thousand times before. “There’s this stigma about giving yourself an injection in the base of the penis.” He paused and took a deep breath. “It doesn’t hurt. I’ve done it. With clever marketing, I can get around it, don’t you think?”

I stared at the man who would sleep a few feet away from me and tried to shake the mental image of him injecting himself in the penis. I wanted to tell him that I thought he was insane and no amount of marketing would ever overcome the horror of his invention. But I told
him I probably needed to learn more about his product before I could offer an opinion. The last thing I wanted to discuss on my first day of prison was erectile dysfunction.

“Yeah, hell,” he said. “It’s your first day. I’ll have plenty of time to fill you in later on.” He started reading again. “I’ve got a prototype,” he said, “but I can’t find anybody on the outside who will test it.”

I wanted to change the subject. “What are the other inmates like?”

“Idiots,” he said, “complete, total idiots.”

Doc said more than four hundred inmates were serving time in Carville. About half of them suffered from some health disorder like heart disease, cancer, or AIDS. Some were in wheelchairs from gunshot wounds, degenerative disease, amputations, or congenital deformities. Since Carville had a hospital, most federal inmates with serious health problems were sent here. But Doc said Carville also had drug dealers, Mafia guys, even murderers. I thought Carville was supposed be a minimum-security prison, and Doc’s description of the other men was unnerving, especially since our room had no doors.

I opened the small closet door looking for a place to hang my pants, but the floor and every shelf were filled with stacks of medical journals on dermatology, clinical oncology, metabolism, and other medical specialties.

“I’ll make some room in there if you need to hang up some clothes,” Doc said.

“You subscribe to all these?” I asked.

“They’re free,” he said.

Pharmaceutical companies sent complimentary subscriptions to any physician who requested copies. After Doc’s conviction, his medical license was suspended in every state except Tennessee, where he’d attended medical school. Since the subscription cards came from a federal medical center, the publications assumed Doc was practicing medicine. He received more than sixty journals a month.

“You read all of them?”

“I may be the only doc in America who actually has the time to read them all,” he said, sitting up on his bed. “I’ve learned as much about medicine in here as I did in med school.”

I figured Doc must know about leprosy so I asked about the patients.

“Grotesque, aren’t they?” Doc said. “They used to live in this very room.”

“Is it contagious?” I asked.

“Not supposed to be,” he said, pausing, “
if
they take their medication. Nobody really knows how the disease is spread.” He added that the mystery surrounding it made him nervous. Doc explained there were a number of theories about how leprosy is contracted, including intimate skin-to-skin contact or eating an infected armadillo. “The most likely theory is inhalation of an infected droplet,” he said with a shrug. “Who knows?”

I wasn’t worried about eating armadillo, or even skin-to-skin contact. Those, I could avoid. But if breathing in a droplet could cause infection, a sneeze or a cough might be enough.

This just kept getting worse. I could be outside doing something worthwhile—paying creditors, taking care of my family. I would gladly have accepted a fine or home confinement or work release or all of them combined, but I didn’t deserve this. Not a leper colony.

Just then Kahn stepped into the room. “You got a job assignment,” he said. “Follow me.”

“Where?” I asked.

Kahn snapped back, “You don’t get to ask questions anymore.”

The walk took about five minutes. I followed Kahn, winding through the old corridors. After Doc’s remarks about leprosy, I was careful not to touch anything. We passed a manicured garden enclosed in a small courtyard. Tiny shrubs and patches of yellow and blue flowers bordered brick paths. It looked like a place where an English family might gather for tea. We turned a corner, and I caught a glimpse of four or five nuns as they hurried into one of the buildings. Through a corridor window, I saw a small monk riding a bicycle through a pecan grove. This place was bizarre, like something out of
Alice in Wonderland
or
The Twilight Zone
. Nuns and monks. A leper with no fingers. A man who howls like a dog. A doctor with an impotence injection device. Inmates fat enough to be in a carnival. A guard who squelches my questions, but seems just fine with prisoners sunbathing. And a legless woman chanting like Dorothy in Oz. How the hell did I end up here?

It turned out Kahn was escorting me to the cafeteria. A hand-carved wooden sign, the kind you might see at a southern diner, was nailed over the door. It read magnolia room. Kahn left me at the door and told me to go inside to get my assignment.

In the cafeteria office a guard asked, “You got good handwriting?”

Actually, my handwriting was superb. I had spent years perfecting it. I had even invented several of my own fonts. In high school I was always asked to help create school signage, and I learned early on that teachers were reluctant to mark up a beautifully written assignment. I loved the praise that came along with fastidious manuscripts. The
notes teachers wrote—
Beautifully written. A pleasure to read. If only all my papers were so neat!
—inspired me to strive for even greater perfection.

“Penmanship is one of my strong suits,” I told the guard.

He handed me a menu for the day’s meals and a set of dry erase markers.

“Write the menu on the board in the patient cafeteria,” he said. “Right through there,” he added, pointing at a door.

As I walked through the kitchen, I saw an inmate stirring a huge pot of soup. He noticed the markers and yelled, “Write big ’cause them lepers can’t see worth a shit!”

I would think twice before bragging again. I pushed through a heavy swinging door and saw them. Fifty, maybe sixty leprosy patients sitting at the tables. I scanned the room for other inmates, but I was the only one. The menu board was on a wall on the opposite side of the room. I kept my eyes on the floor as I moved through a maze of wheelchairs and walkers, canes and crutches.

An Asian man sat at a table in the middle of the cafeteria. He stared at me as I approached. A white growth completely covered one of his eyes. Between his two digitless hands, he balanced a pork chop. His good eye followed me as I walked. The skin around his mouth and chin was covered with a dark blue ointment, and his hands were shaped like mittens. I didn’t want to stare, but I couldn’t help myself. The pork chop slipped from his grip and fell onto his plate. He mumbled something, his mouth full of chewed meat.

I passed men and women with odd-shaped noses, discolored faces and disfigured hands, oversized sunglasses, irregular-shaped shoes, and stumps from missing limbs. I held my breath, hurried toward the menu board, and stood as close to it as possible, my back to the lepers.

I couldn’t believe lepers still lived in America. Leprosy was something that happened in third-world countries. I had always imagined lepers—dangerous and grotesque—the way they were described in the Bible or portrayed in Hollywood films, being forced out of cities and told to wear bells or clappers to warn travelers of danger.

I didn’t want to breathe the air, or accidentally brush up against one of them, or get close enough that the infection could reach out, take hold in my body, and turn me into a horror.

Focus on the menu, I told myself.

I took off my apron and wiped away the sloppy handwriting that described yesterday’s meals. I started to copy the menu from the paper the guard had given me. Then I felt a tap on my back.

I froze. I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want to face these people. Doc was wary of the disease, and I figured he knew plenty.

I felt the tap again. I reluctantly turned and saw the man with one white eye. He pushed himself up out of his wheelchair.

“Use the
purple
!” he yelled. A drop of spit flew from his mouth. It hit my cheek. I took a half step back.

“We can see
purple
the best!” This time the spit landed on my apron.

I nodded. I desperately wanted him to go away. He sat down in his wheelchair and rolled toward the exit. I scrambled to find a clean corner on my apron to wipe my face. My heart pounded, and I felt dizzy. I couldn’t believe he had just spit on me. Then I remembered Doc’s words:
inhalation of an infected droplet
. I took shallow breaths. A cold burn ran through my cheeks. Part embarrassment and part rage, but mostly shock.

I needed to pull myself together. I needed to stay calm and be reasonable. Right now, I had a job to complete, and I wanted to finish as soon as possible.

The room had an overpowering sweet smell like the syrupy stench of fresh-cut banana trees. Combined with the thick, greasy odor of fried pork chops, the smell made me nauseated. I gathered myself and wrote in big purple letters:
French Toast. Tuna Casserole. Meat Loaf
. The side items—
Mashed Potatoes, Green Beans, Tater Tots
—I wrote in yellow.

As I carefully transcribed the menu, most of the leprosy patients exited the cafeteria. Some used walkers, but most were in wheelchairs. Thankfully, they left me alone. I reboxed the markers. Then I saw the old woman in the antique wheelchair, the only one left in the room.
She cranked her wheelchair toward me. She stopped a few feet away, not too close, and uttered the same odd incantation. “There’s no place like home.” Aware, I think, of my discomfort, she looked at me and said, “Hope you get back soon, ’cause there’s no place like home.” She smiled and cranked her wheelchair out of the cafeteria. When she reached the exit, she called out again, “There’s no place like home.”

An inmate who had come in to mop the floor whispered to me. “That lady,” he said, pointing toward the old woman, “she got the leprosy when she was twelve years old. Her daddy dropped her off one day and never came back.” Then he asked, “Still feeling sorry for yourself?”

I guessed the woman was close to eighty. That would mean she’d been here for about sixty-eight years. I was going on my sixth hour.

Maggie’s ballet recital.

Little Neil at Walloon Lake. Photographs I attached to my locker with toothpaste.